Each year, millions of people are afflicted with sickness and death because they do not have access to basic sanitation facilities. Displaced populations living in refugee camps or other temporary living conditions experience these problems most acutely. In the absence of modern plumbing and conventional toilets, displaced populations often resort to open pit latrines for urination and defecation. While pit latrines are easy to construct, they present numerous public health and safety limitations.
For example, in areas affected by monsoons or other heavy rains, pit latrines tend to overflow and contaminate areas surrounding the pit. Further, stagnant waste can provide a breeding ground for mosquitoes and other insects, which often carry disease. Pit latrines also are only temporary, and must be filled in and replaced every four years. Because previously dug latrines cannot be reused, space to construct new latrines can be limited. Pit latrines also present a safety risk to children, who can fall into the open pit.
Pit latrines also do not accommodate some local traditional and religious practices. For example, in some refugee camps, a toilet design must be sensitive to cultural aversions to human waste. Some cultures require that individuals practice a form of personal cleansing to be considered pure for prayers and other religious activities. In these cultures, both the user and maintenance workers should have minimal contact with human waste while using and servicing the toilet. Because pit latrines frequently require workers to interact with waste, and do not provide for personal cleansing, they fail to accommodate these local customs and practices. Finally, in refugee camps and other temporary living conditions, there may be regulatory or practical prohibitions on constructing permanent structures, requiring that toilets be either portable or temporary.
For at least these reasons, there exists a need for a toilet that provides privacy, safety, cleanliness, compact size, and an aesthetically pleasing design that can be implemented at low cost in constrained conditions such as, but not limited to, refugee camps in underdeveloped regions. For similar reasons, such a system could also be used in other locations where access to basic sanitation facilities may be limited, such as camping.